Hindustan Times has entered into an exclusive content partnership with The Washington Post for India. This partnership between the two media giants, which will be effective on January 1, 2010, was formally announced by Sanjoy Narayan, Editor-in-Chief, Hindustan Times, and Raju Narisetti, Managing Editor, The Washington Post.

As part of this partnership, Hindustan Times will now be able to offer Post and Newsweek content on an exclusive basis in India as one more way to provide readers the same level of analysis and perspective from the world at large.

Besides choosing from daily news and feature articles from The Post as well as opinion pieces and book reviews, Hindustan Times will also have access to columns by eminent writers such as Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International; Robert Samuelson, business and financial columnist and Contributor News Editor, Newsweek; and David Ignatius, former Editor of the International Herald Tribune and Post columnist.

With an already strong line-up of prominent columnists such as Vir Sanghvi, RK Pachauri, Rajdeep Sardesai and Ramachandra Guha, Hindustan Times will now take its readers one notch higher on the ‘thinking curve’.

Hindustan Times readers will also have access to reporting from Washington Post bureaus around the world, including Beijing, Islamabad, Kabul, Baghdad, Johannesburg, London, Moscow, Nairobi, Teheran, Tokyo, Mexico City, Paris, and Jerusalem, as well as New Delhi.

Content from The Post, which will be selected by Hindustan Times editors, will appear under Post-branded space in Hindustan Times. Additional terms of the long-term agreement haven’t been disclosed.

This is HT Media’s second major collaboration with an international media brand. Its business paper, Mint, which is now the country’s second-largest read business daily, has a very successful collaboration since its inception in 2007 February, with News Corp’s The Wall Street Journal.

Commenting on the agreement, The Post Managing Editor Raju Narisetti, who was incidentally the first Editor of Mint, said, “The Washington Post is pleased that Hindustan Times, with its large audience base, has chosen to provide its readers in India content from the Post and Newsweek on an exclusive basis for English language newspapers. India’s growing role on a global stage makes readers in India a natural audience for the Post.”

Echoing this sentiment, Sanjoy Narayan said, “This partnership between The Washington Post and Hindustan Times is actually a meeting of minds and a joining of forces that arm Hindustan Times readers to take on the world around them every day.”